PRESSURE ON PADRES TO SCORE AS MYSTERY SEASON ABOUT TO BEGIN

Please view me as an exception, one of the few guides fearless enough to take you though the vast, unexplored jungle that is Petco National Park, where the winds collapse into zephyrs at dusk, the marine layer moves in like pewter tapioca, and baseballs are stopped as if grabbed by ghosts in the darkness.

So come, if you dare, to hopefully find the unknown that is the 2012 San Diego Padres Baseball Club.

We know one thing about these Padres, and that is, we don’t know much. There’s plenty of shade, not much light.

But there’s enough to make just about every pundit and Punjabi on the face of the earth pick them last in the National League West, maybe losing 90-plus games — the first possibly coming in this afternoon’s season opener vs. The Two Billion Dollar Bums at PNP.

How can anybody pin down this baseball club, its strengths and weaknesses?

There’s plenty of it. Perhaps no other Padres team since the Tom Werner Fire Sale of the early 1990s has a smaller handle on it than this one. There’s no place to get a grip.

With other Padres teams of this millennium, we at least had an idea starting pitching would be good, the bullpen exceptional. It still may be. But we can’t be sure.

Before the end of last season, top setup man Mike Adams was traded to Texas. Heath Bell, one of the game’s best closers, was granted free-agent leave during the offseason. The Pads’ dynamic starter, mercurial Mat Latos, was traded to Cincinnati. The only starter who won 10 games, Aaron Harang (14-7), wasn’t re-signed.

Veteran Huston Street has been brought in to close and gas pump Andrew Cashner (who missed most of last year) to set up. Tim Stauffer, who would have started today against Dodgers Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw, is out for a spell with a bad triceps. Edinson Volquez, brought in from the Reds, will go today, and the team prays it sees the Volquez of four seasons ago, the pre-Tommy John surgery Volquez. Stauffer is good. Cory Luebke is good. Clayton Richard and Dustin Moseley can be good. There is talent here.

“No question, our pitching has to be good for us to succeed,” Byrnes says. “There is less certainty, but I feel good about what we saw in March. I feel much better about it now.”

OK. Uncertainty, unknown. Potato, patato.

Without question, PNP’s meteorological quirks and its expanses are a plus for pitchers young and old. But throwers on other teams get to pitch in Petco, too, meaning Padres hitters have to bat in Petco. Can the Pads field an everyday lineup that doesn’t allow the park to swallow it whole?

It’s tiring, listening to hitters complain about the ballpark. Adrian Gonzalez, once a major complainer, hit 24, 30, 36, 40, and 31 home runs during his five full seasons with the Padres. Last year, with the Red Sox, he hit 27. What was his problem in Fenway, the Curse of the Bambino?